We’re just those quirky folks you come to join when you need a little escape from gentrification...those au naturel bohemians who entertain you on your sunny days away from the office.

You take for granted our existence for the most part, but I am here to tell you that one day soon Goliath will win and you will be wishing away the world with no place to go, let alone get naked.

How dare we enjoy ourselves for almost free, just 15 minutes from downtown Vancouver? It seems to me this can no longer be tolerated by the University of British Columbia and its towers of mass destruction - their hopes for a ferry terminal that will one day expediently transport thousands of polluting tourists directly up to Squamish without having to go all the way around, through the city and across the bridge.

A proverbial new sea wall is looming and us nudists are being forced from our natural habitat because David liked to drink beer, smoke the occasional joint and pee in the bushes.

It’s too bad us nude sunbathers didn’t resonate closer to your hearts, because it wasn’t about being nude. It was about fighting for the natural state of things. It’s about clean air and water. It’s about body acceptance and the shunning of class systems that separate us humanoids.

It’s actually about inclusion not exclusion. We represent the ultimate liberation from consumerism by bonding with fellow beach goers without the clothes and cars that separate us elsewhere.

Alas, we skinny dippers are portrayed as the scourge of the earth, luring unsuspecting teenagers into a path of debaucheries. Peeing in the woods now constitutes mass pollution, regardless of big business dumping toxic chemicals in our drinking water everyday.

Yes, our pee in the woods is the problem we’re told. That’s why we need a road in and flush toilets: to "save" the earth. Then maybe they can put a sh*tty chain restaurant on the beach and run those homemade food vagrants off the sand.

I see extinction for myself and other vendors just over the horizon. I don’t think I am alone. But I ask you to reminisce with me momentarily about Wreck Beach past and put the future on hold.

Remember when there was a pageant of colorful vendors parading along the shore line, bringing homemade refreshments and victuals, clothes and other unique art. “How dare this un-taxable free enterprise still exist?”

"PIZZAAAA TIME,” is yelled from the bottom of the stairs accompanied by a trumpet song.

“Pina Coladas,” comes out sultry and sexy when served up by gorgeous Quebec girls.

“Homemade trifle,” and the jingling of a bell.

“Chocolate nipples and sunshine samosas,” in an undisclosed European accent.

“Buds, buds, buds, mushrooms and acid,” screams some Frenchie near the “pharmacy.”

“Cigareeeeets. Nice cigareets for sale,” sings an old Irish bootlegger armed with candy bars in his other cooler.

And of course “WATA WATA WATA MELON. WAHOOO for Watermelon!” - a little ditty you can’t stop singing to yourself even off the beach.

Those were the days when vendors patrolled the beach for unfavorable activity, words traveling faster than feet to keep illicit sexual behavior and cameras under close scrutiny. It was and is vendors that clean up the beach, re-hydrate the flock, satiate the tummies, entertain masses, assuage violent tempers and generally make everyone forget for at time the hustle and bustle of the city life they left behind.

Here high finance could be reduced to a haggle or a phone number. Maybe even bets on a ruthless game of textiles versus nudes at Beer Ball.

Those days seem distant now, and the RCMP has replaced the vendor patrol by making it their mandate to wipe the vendors out "come hell or high water."

They have incorporated a new stance they call “Parking," where they position themselves 50 feet apart, all five of them, and make themselves at home for the next five hours.

Then they lay in wait, much like the blue heron we see standing very still in the water, until tiny fish think they are a reed and swim close enough to be eaten. Only these blue and yellow birds are waiting for the call of a beer can.

I mean really, the nerve of us enjoying a beer. In Canada, no less! Next thing you know they will be busting up street hockey. This new approach gives off the feeling of chaperones at a high school dance, making sure no one gets too close, or security guards at the mall with nothing to do but intimidate teens.

It seems to me there is a fine line between policing and perpetrating, and the cops are closing in on the latter. But really they are just thugs hired by The Man to slowly faze us out, to make us feel small and weak...divide the pack or imprison.

Have we become so complacent with our shiny new consumer options that nobody will rock a sinking ship anymore? Have you noticed that no new vendors follow in our footsteps? No sexy new generation of entrepreneurs apply for our clandestine jobs?

I personally have always believed I would one day pass the Watermelon baton to some young, energetic, finger-on-the-pulse, well-spoken girl in her twenties...only that day has not come.

So I am telling you to enjoy the sh*t out of Wreck Beach in the next few years, because it’s time-honored tradition of autonomy and free enterprise is growing obsolete in today’s political climate.

Get down there. Get naked. Get drunk. Get back to your roots before they get paved over.

Watermelon [2]

If you enjoyed this story, you will really enjoy Watermelon's Bust [3].